Free Republic

North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem filed a legal opinion last week confirming that the state does not recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages, allowing a man married to another man to come to North Dakota and marry a woman without divorcing his husband. [snip] Presented with a legal hypothetical, Attorney General Stenehjem answered three questions: whether someone in a same-sex marriage in another state can also receive a marriage license to someone of the opposite sex in North Dakota, whether they can file legal documents as "Single" when they possess a same-sex marriage license in another state, and whether this would...

The North Dakota Petroleum Council, NDPC, flaring task force is putting finishing touches on its recommendations to reduce flaring in the state. In September, Gov. Jack Dalrymple requested the development of a task force to study the problem and provide some solid solutions to the North Dakota Industrial Commission. The task force will present its findings at the Jan. 29 commission meeting. Task force Chairman Eric Dille of EOG Resources told Petroleum News Bakken that the task force had hoped to present at the Dec. 19 Industrial Commission meeting, but the technical subcommittee has some recommendations that needed further review....

The percentage of North Dakota oil shipped by rail will likely jump significantly in the next year as producers increasingly turn to trains to reach U.S. refineries where premium prices are fetched, the state’s top oil regulator told lawmakers Thursday. Lynn Helms, director of the Department of Mineral Resources, told the Legislature’s Government Finance Committee that he expects as much as 90 percent of the state’s crude will move by rail in 2014, up from about 60 percent at present. North Dakota, the nation’s No. 2 oil producer behind Texas, is on pace to surpass 1 million barrels daily early...

Past experience in Idaho, northeastern Oregon and Washington state illustrate that it's time to take gray wolves completely off the federal list of endangered species. The West’s wolf problem started in 1995 and 1996. That’s when 66 wolves from Canada were reintroduced in Idaho and Yellowstone National Park. Those wolves multiplied and spread into Wyoming, Utah and Oregon. They also took up residence in Washington state and Montana, where other wolves from Canada already lived. Today at least 1,674 wolves live in 321 packs within the region, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That’s in addition to the...

State-owned energy giants and international majors continue to top lists of the world’s largest oil companies. But the U.S. shale revolution is beginning to make a mark, as U.S. independent oil and gas producers rise in the ranks. Energy Intelligence has released its list of the world’s 100 largest oil and gas companies, with several independents — including Houston-based Anadarko Petroleum and Apache Corp. — making among the biggest gains. The annual ranking is based on the prior year’s reserves, production, refined product sales and refinery distillation capacity. Anadarko jumped two spots to No. 44 and Apache rose one spot...

In 2012, it was the oil tanker-truck trade. This year, the oil-by-rail boom inundated the U.S. East and Gulf coasts. In 2014, the shale revolution hits the water, says U.S. commodity merchant Freepoint Commodities. A dramatic slump in U.S. cash crude prices in recent weeks has vividly shown that the unrelenting rise in shale oil production from North Dakota and Texas is rapidly nearing the point of saturation for Gulf Coast refiners, likely forcing more and more cargoes up the East Coast on tankers. The swell of crude emerging from the Bakken in North Dakota, plus the Eagle Ford and...

DICKINSON, N.D. - The foundation has been laid for North Dakota’s first new refinery since 1954. Administrators will move into their office building at the Dakota Prairie Refinery, four miles west of Dickinson, in about two weeks as hiring picks up. Cranes and crews are building the storage tanks, and the skeleton of the maintenance building is up. The air coolers are in from Tulsa, Okla.; the process units are coming from Houston by truck early next year; and the crude distillation column is currently being shipped in from Shanghai, plant manager David Podratz said. The refinery will tap into...

One of the most prominent white separatists in the country is distancing himself from a white supremacist who faces terrorizing charges for allegedly threatening people in a North Dakota town he’s trying to turn into an Aryan enclave. Tom Metzger, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and founder of the White Aryan Resistance, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he has instructed his attorney to return property in Leith that Craig Cobb has deeded to him. … Cobb, 62, and his friend, 29-year-old Kynan Dutton, are accused of terrorizing people in Leith with guns over the...

WILLISTON, N.D. – The entire U.S. Williston Basin produced more than 1 million barrels of oil per day in September, driven by another record month of North Dakota oil production. North Dakota produced 931,940 barrels per day, a 2 percent increase over August, according to preliminary numbers released Friday by the Department of Mineral Resources. The U.S. Williston Basin also includes portions of South Dakota, which produced 5,017 barrels per day in September, and Montana, which produced 75,460 barrels per day in August. ... Bakken oil production in North Dakota and Montana is projected to top 1 million barrels of...

FARGO – Thousands of customers in North Dakota must switch health coverage because their plans are being discontinued due to new requirements under the Affordable Care Act. The three major health insurers in North Dakota were required to report to state regulators their enrollment figures and cancellations under the health reform act, commonly known as Obamacare. The state’s largest health insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota, covers about 31,600 members – 17,000 in small groups and 14,600 individuals – whose insurance plans are being discontinued. That combined figure represents 8 percent of the North Dakota Blues’ 400,000 membership...

Nashville, TN – Today, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham introduced the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. The legislation currently has 33 cosponsors – but Senator Alexander is not one of them. Conservative Senate candidate Joe Carr called on Senator Alexander to change his stance and add himself as a co-sponsor. “I’m strongly pro-life and believe it’s imperative the Senate pass this important piece of legislation. When Senator Graham announced his co-sponsors and Senator Alexander’s name was missing, I was disappointed. I am hoping Senator Alexander will change his stance and add himself as a co-sponsor. This legislation is too...

IIt’s no secret that North Dakota’s oil industry is booming. Advancements in hydraulic fracturing have helped Western North Dakota experience month after month of record-setting oil production, making for one of the fastest-growing economic expansions the U.S. has ever seen. With the region having one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country and generating over 75,000 new jobs in the past few years, thousands of workers have showed up searching for high-paying jobs. Oil field workers in the state saw an average annual wage of $112,462 in 2012. Competition has intensified since the boom started around 2007, but entry...

A Canadian company has applied to build the largest oil pipeline yet from western North Dakota’s booming oil patch and will soon begin courting oil producers to reserve space, a key step in a $2.6 billion project that would move millions of gallons of oil to Minnesota and Wisconsin. Calgary, Alberta-based Enbridge Energy is proposing the 612-mile Sandpiper pipeline to each day carry 225,000 barrels of oil to a hub in northern Minnesota and 375,000 barrels to one in northwestern Wisconsin. If approved by regulators, it would be the largest pipeline moving oil out of North Dakota, the nation’s second-leading...

GRAND FORKS – North Dakota may not recognize gay marriage, but the North Dakota National Guard does, a spokeswoman said Friday. Because the state receives federal funds for Guard units, it will process military identification for same-sex spouses of Guard members, said Billie Jo Lorius in response to a media inquiry. Some Guard units in states that do not recognize gay marriage had been singled out by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel this past week in a speech before the Anti-Defamation League. The Defense Department began issuing identity cards to the spouses in same-sex couples following a Supreme Court ruling this...

Most of us are aware by now that the introduction of widespread hydraulic fracturing into the oil and gas business has resulted in a rapid growth in U.S. production. U.S. crude output is up by nearly 2.5 million barrels a day (b/d) since mid-2007 and natural gas production is up by 25 percent. The key question of course is how long production will continue to grow before it inevitably declines. Optimists maintain that we have just scratched the surface of our shale oil reserves and that production will continue increasing for years, if not decades. Realists are not so sure,...

A lightning strike may have caused a pipeline rupture that spilled more than 20,000 barrels of oil in a North Dakota wheat field, federal regulators said in a report issued Thursday. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said a preliminary investigation of the Tesoro Corp. pipeline break “points to a strong electrical discharge as the cause of the failure.” Damon Hill, a spokesman for the agency, said a final determination as to the exact cause has not been made. The agency based its initial findings on mechanical and metallurgical analysis of a section of the...

Three environmental groups petitioned the federal government Monday to block new oil and gas development in an area of key sage grouse habitat near Douglas. The petition came a month after Gov. Matt Mead announced a plan with Chesapeake Energy to allow drilling in what is known as the Douglas Core Area and represented an effort by environmentalists to counter what they see as an erosion of state sage grouse protections. ... WildEarth Guardians, the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance and American Bird Conservancy petitioned the Department of Interior and U.S. Bureau of Land Management to prohibit construction of new wellpads and...

For decades, OPEC nations have, for the most part, enjoyed a good living. As long as oil prices remain high, they can recover billions of barrels of oil at relatively low cost and sell it to the rest of the oil-thirsty world. But the North American shale oil boom is shaking things up for the cartel. In fact, the surge in U.S. and Canadian oil production resulting from the application of new drilling technologies threatens to reduce OPEC's share of the global oil market this year to its lowest level in more than a decade. Does that imply gloom and...

In the U.S. shale oil race, the Eagle Ford formation in Texas has beaten North Dakota's Bakken to the 1 million barrel per day milestone, according to a U.S. Energy Information Administration report on Tuesday. The new monthly report, which is the first national effort to lay out comparable monthly figures and projections from six major shale plays, highlighted the stunning speed with which the Eagle Ford region has overtaken the Bakken region that first showed how hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technology could revolutionize the oil industry. Total production from Eagle Ford hit 1 million bpd in August and...

<p>U.S. Air Force officers entrusted with the launch keys to long-range nuclear missiles have been caught twice this year leaving open a blast door that is intended to help prevent a terrorist or other intruder from entering their underground command post, Air Force officials said.</p>